The Escape Artists

by Neal Bascomb

  Back at the sap’s midway point, Garland waited. Fifteen minutes. Then half an hour. Nobody was moving, and from the gurgling sound echoing through the sap, the men were starving for oxygen. With his own arms weakening, he was sure he was suffering the same. Now and again he flicked on his flashlight for some relief from the impenetrable darkness. Thoughts of death pervaded.

  He had almost lost hope when he sensed the officer behind him finally retreating. Garland followed, hauling his rucksack behind him. Time and again, the line halted. The men’s strength was depleted, and their coats and kits kept snagging on rocks. After much strain, Garland reached the long slope that ran up toward the tunnel entrance. He might as well have tried to climb a cliff backward. Then someone grabbed his legs and pulled him out.

  Alerted to the cave-in, Durnford and Grieve had organized a chain of men to haul bodies from the tunnel as they neared the chamber. The first concern was to get everybody out alive. The second was to do so before 6:00 a.m., an hour fast approaching, when a guard would unlock the doors and send the orderlies out on their duties. If they failed to clear the sap, and if men were still moving about the orderly quarters, they risked the breakout being discovered long before the morning roll call at 9:00 a.m. Three hours could prove the difference between escape or recapture for those officers who had safely made it out.

  Some in the ruck had fainted or were too weak to evacuate the tunnel on their own. Garland volunteered to drag them out. With great effort and risk of falling victim to another collapse, he crawled deep into the tunnel again. He managed to muscle one officer after another back through the hole.

  Shortly before 6:00 a.m., he had helped out all but Hartigan and the officer behind him. He and a few others remained in the chamber to retrieve them while the orderlies and officers snuck back to their rooms and removed any signs of their nighttime activity. From the windows, Durnford watched for any hint that the breakout had been discovered, but the guards walked their normal rounds. The men might yet make it to the first roll call without any alarm being raised.

  A half hour later, they succeeded in extracting Hartigan and the other officer. Neither was in great shape, but they were breathing. While they recovered, Garland and the others crept back up the stairwell, across the eaves, and into their own quarters.

  Soon after, Hartigan and the other officer came straight out of the eastern orderly door of Block B. They should have returned to their rooms through the attic, like the others had done, but after their experience in the tunnel, they were not thinking straight. As they crossed to the cookhouse, guards seized them. Officers were not allowed onto the parade ground before 7:00 a.m., and certainly not officers exiting the orderly quarters in muddy clothes. Minutes later, Niemeyer stormed up to them, demanding to know what they were about. Neither answered.

  The standoff was interrupted by the arrival at the eastern postern gate of a red-faced and clearly incensed farmer, complaining that a parade of men had stamped about his fields in the night, ruining his crops. Niemeyer and his guards followed the farmer out of the gate and found the hole dug in the earth between the rows of beans.

  “So, a tunnel!” Niemeyer exclaimed. He turned to one of his lieutenants, a man called Mandelbrot, and ordered him to lock down the camp to determine how many prisoners had escaped. While the guard headed for the barracks, Niemeyer ordered another guard to climb down into the tunnel to find its starting point. The guard eyed the gaping hole, then his commandant, and shook his head. There might be officers still in the sap, he said. Next Niemeyer tried to send his dog into the opening, but the animal balked at the order as well.

  Niemeyer strode off to the Kommandantur. He rang the local police, the town’s garrison commander, and, finally, General Hänisch in Hanover. A manhunt needed to be launched. No effort could be spared. Mandelbrat had locked both barracks and restricted all the prisoners to their rooms. He had never much cared for Commandant Niemeyer and his constant derision, and as he went about the corridors counting the men, he could barely suppress a thin smile as silence met his calling out the name of officer after officer. Murmurs of excitement from the prisoners followed him through the barracks. “The tunnel has gone, boys,” one British officer crowed to his roommates.

  A grand escape had indeed come off—the only question was how many had managed to get away. Mandelbrat finished his count and went to meet Niemeyer in the Spielplatz. “Neun und zwanzig, Herr Captain.”

  From a barracks window, Durnford watched the scene unfold. Later, he vividly described the moment: “Niemeyer’s jaw dropped, his moustachios for a brief instant lost their twirl, his solid stomach swelled less impressively against his overcoat. Just for a moment he became grey and looked very old. But only for a moment.” Then Niemeyer went beet-red. He cursed and kicked the ground and shook his fists at the officers watching him from the windows. When they started to jeer at him, he ordered his guards to shoot at anyone appearing at the glass. Several shots were fired but, accustomed to Niemeyer’s tactics, officers in the crosshairs were able to evade the gunfire.

  Niemeyer ordered guards to be posted at the tunnel exit and beside the locked doors of the barracks. Nobody was allowed out for any reason, and any officers gathering near the windows were to be shot. He charged his lieutenants with locating the tunnel entrance by any means necessary—even if they had to dig up its entire length.

  Throughout the barracks, the officers reverently repeated the number of men who had made it out of the camp: “Twenty-nine! Twenty-nine!” It was the greatest breakout of the war—the greatest, perhaps, in the history of war.

  Twenty-one

  Hunkered in a stand of corn stalks on Wednesday, July 24, Bennett listened to the distant voices of the search parties and their barking dogs as they scoured the woods a quarter mile away. Now and again, some ventured closer to the field where he hid with Campbell-Martin and Bousfield, but they dared not move during daylight hours. A couple of horse-drawn carts carrying soldiers also passed on the nearby road.

  The hunt was intensifying, and from previous experience they knew that the German Army would have informed the surrounding villages about the escape, asking civilians to be on the alert. Unless they put many miles between them and Holzminden, and soon, the net would continue to tighten. Still they remained in the fields, anxious and unable to sleep.

  Only when it was well after dark did they continue, moving as quietly as possible through the forest. It was a starless night, and they had trouble maintaining their compass course. They soon found themselves lost in a gully and were forced to backtrack through the dark woods until they again found the right path. At one point they spotted someone they feared was a German soldier carrying a large backpack. They tried to evade him only to hear him call out in English. It was Philip “Murphy” Smith, a twenty-two-year-old Irish cavalry officer and member of the ruck.

  The small group started out for Hummersen, down a road bordered by thick forests, when two men emerged from the trees in front of them. It was Mardock and Laurence, who had recently come to a crossroads and were confused as to which direction to take. They informed the others that Major Morrogh was a short distance away. When Morrogh caught up with them, they numbered seven. The area was seemingly crawling with escaped prisoners.

  The men huddled together in the woods, sharing stories of the breakout. Morrogh regaled them with his adventures of the past few hours, including accidentally setting his entire tin of matches on fire, almost being stumbled upon by a woman and her two children foraging in the woods where he lay naked while his clothes dried, and awakening in midafternoon, standing in a clearing in “full view of anyone who might be there.” For the first time in his life, at the most inopportune moment, he’d found himself sleepwalking.

  His fellow officers chortled at these stories, and their voices and laughter grew louder as they engaged in welcome camaraderie, billows of cigarette smoke rising from their midst. Finally, the men put an end to the careless banter; they needed to put as much distan
ce between themselves and Holzminden as possible. It was too dangerous to travel in such a large pack, they decided, so they split apart. Bennett said goodbye once again to his former pilot, Laurence, and the others, before he and Campbell-Martin started off on their own. They had fallen far short of their anticipated pace of ten miles a night.

  Heavy rucksacks digging into their shoulders, Gray, Kennard, and Blain threaded through a forest in the dark. They kept to single file, keen for any sound other than the call of night birds or the skitter of a squirrel through the underbrush. The three had started that day’s march before dusk, balancing the risk of being seen against the benefits of getting beyond the ten-mile radius in which they expected Niemeyer to concentrate his manhunt during its first twenty-four hours.

  Where they could, they followed the roads, but these tended not to be straight—and often directed them toward some hamlet or town they needed to avoid. They also found themselves hiking through fields and patches of forest. In his many years in the military, Gray had become a skilled orienteer, and his steady compass bearings saved them from the many misdirections and lost time suffered by their fellow fugitives.

  Shortly after midnight, they reached the hamlet of Gellersen, a distance of roughly fifteen miles from Holzminden. On the outskirts, a farmer spotted the trio, too late for them to turn back, hurry into a field, or otherwise find cover. They continued, hoping that Gellersen’s main street would be abandoned at that hour, much like the other villages they had passed that night.

  To their surprise, they found the opposite was true: oil lamps flickered in many of the windows, and huddles of Germans stood outside their cottages, clearly on edge. The three pilots were sure that news of the Holzminden escape had reached Gellersen and that the villagers were alarmed by the possibility of an enemy fugitive in their midst. It was time for the men to put their aliases to the test.

  Before reaching the first house, Kennard had slipped his rucksack to Blain. Blain and Gray then bookended Kennard, each with a firm hand on his arms. Kennard made the occasional effort to pull away from their grasp, whereupon his two minders would wrench him back in line. Gray never hesitated as they advanced through Gellersen. Unless they were stopped, he did not intend to explain their presence. He was on official business, with the papers to back him up.

  Conversations halted as the three passed, and they felt the eyes of every villager on them. Whispers and murmurs followed in their wake, and soon a number of townspeople were trailing after them. A confrontation was inevitable, Gray knew, but the closer they were to the far side of town when it occurred, the better opportunity they would have to run off if—or when—it came to that point. Throughout, Kennard struggled against his escorts and occasionally rolled his eyes wildly.

  When they reached the last cottage, a few villagers finally crossed their path, forcing them to stop. Gray drew out his papers: his identity card in the name of Franz Vogel and the letter stating his duties as chief guard at the Vechta insane asylum. With a glance toward his increasingly agitated charge, Gray recounted in perfect German how the man he was escorting, Kurt Grau, had recently absconded from the asylum and should be given a wide berth. This had the intended effect on some of the villagers, but Gray was concerned about any doubters in the crowd. He asked to be provided some water. His charge was prone to convulsions, he said, and the low growl rising from Grau’s throat was an indication that one was coming on quickly. “A quietening drug” should calm him.

  On cue, Kennard tried to break loose. Blain grabbed his arm and knocked him roughly on the side of the head. Gasps of shock rose from a few of the villagers, while one ran off to fetch some water. Playing to his audience now, Kennard whimpered and shook as if he had no control over his limbs. Gray explained to the onlookers that they could only travel by night, since encounters such as this one only set the lunatic off.

  When the villager returned with a glass of water, Blain put his hand out to bar him, leaning over to Gray and briefly whispering in his ear. Gray nodded. No glass, he explained to the man. Grau might break it and use the shards as a weapon. With that, they had the villagers completely fooled. A pewter mug of water was found while Kennard thrashed about like his tunic was on fire. He managed to give Blain a blow in revenge before being wrestled to the street. Blain and Gray pinned him down by his arms and legs. He only fought harder until a pill (aspirin) was forced between his lips and washed down with the water. Sparing no drama, Kennard continued to writhe underneath Blain and Gray as it took effect. With every moment, he seemed to grow weaker, his twitches more spasmodic, like a condemned man dangling from the end of a rope. Finally, he was still.

  The villagers looked on in shock, but Gray promised that the patient would awaken in a short while, no worse off than he was before. During the wait, Gray and Blain enjoyed some wine, bread, and cheese from an elderly farmer, who clearly had taken seriously the request from Vechta’s chief of police, as stated in the men’s papers, to give the guards Vogel and Holzmann “all possible help” in bringing Grau back to the asylum.

  They also gained some useful intelligence from the villagers: a manhunt was under way for some Allied POWs, and a company of soldiers was in the area. They were searching the countryside and guarding the road and railway line due north of Gellersen. The two guards could not have been more grateful for the insight. Finally Kennard fluttered his eyes awake, and Gray and Blain assisted him off the street. Together, they led their groggy patient away. Once clear of the village, they celebrated their success, although Kennard bemoaned the ill treatment his role had demanded of him. He was especially disappointed that his minders had not saved him so much as a crumb of the bread and cheese they’d been given.

  By the morning of July 25, none of the fugitives had been caught, and Niemeyer vented his rage on those who remained behind. He instituted new “emergency orders,” stating that they were for the safety of the prisoners. However, the list posted on the cookhouse wall and on the doors of the barracks reflected campwide punishment:

  No officer of Block A was allowed to enter Block B for any purpose—and vice versa. Penalty for violation: 3 days in isolation.

  No officer was permitted to enter any room but his own for any purpose. Penalty: 3 days.

  No officer was allowed to stop/loiter in the passages. Penalty: 3 days.

  Parole walks stopped.

  Theatrical performances forbidden.

  Baths closed.

  Parcel and tin room shuttered.

  Activities in the Spielplatz stopped.

  Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Stokes-Roberts, now the senior British officer at the camp, asked Niemeyer to lift the restrictions, which allowed the prisoners to do nothing more than “eat, sleep, and breathe.”

  “Go away!” Niemeyer barked. “I do not like you. I forbid you to speak to me or any of my lieutenants.”

  The new rules were almost impossible to follow to the letter, and a dozen officers were sent to the jug by the end of the first day. Niemeyer made the rat-infested cells even more uncomfortable by covering the windows with boards, keeping the electric light burning day and night, and sending a guard into every cell once an hour to “see that the prisoner was present.”

  Then there were the arbitrary abuses. A guard shoved an officer down the stairs for not moving fast enough. Lights in both barracks would suddenly be turned on in the middle of the night, and any officer who tried to switch them off was sent to solitary. An Australian private questioned a guard about a new order and was hauled off to the cellar for two days without bedding, food, or drink. Upset over this treatment, one officer dropped a plank of wood out his window, narrowly missing Niemeyer. In typical response, guards randomly fired into the block.

  Most resistance, however, was passive. Officers showed up to roll call in unbuttoned uniforms or without boots or tunics. They refused to salute or respond to German commands. This incensed Niemeyer, and he had his guards charge a line of officers, one of whom was stabbed with a bayonet.

  He
grew even more furious when it was revealed that the tunnel entrance, whose location was only determined by digging up the entire length of the sap, had been right under the noses of his guards for months. His rage festered when the residents of Holzminden began coming to the camp to see the great tunnel and to wonder aloud how it could have gone unnoticed. A photographer even came to take pictures of the scar of upturned earth that led from the field to the eastern entrance of Block B.

  No amount of punishment seemed capable of satisfying Niemeyer. He was obsessed with recapturing all twenty-nine of the escapees. Such a mass breakout would not only be an embarrassment to Germany, it would prove ruinous to Niemeyer’s career. As part of his campaign to find them, he posted notices in local and national newspapers to ask for cooperation: “We urgently and under all circumstances request help to get hold of all escaped officers in the interest of the defense of our country. We particularly call on the country populations, berry pickers, hay collectors, youth military groups, hikers, and hunters to look out for anything suspicious. We know from experience that fugitives tend to hide in forests. At night one should watch out for any noise and especially the barking of dogs in villages. A high reward is promised for assistance.” The reward offered was five thousand marks, a considerable sum in wartorn Germany, for any information that led to the capture of a Holzminden prisoner, dead or alive.

  On Thursday afternoon, Rathborne attempted to bed down in a stand of woods for some desperately needed rest. But he found little reprieve from the biting ants that crawled down his collar and up his pant legs. Bouts of rain dampened his clothes, but there was never enough to collect. He was not yet so desperate to drink from puddles, but he soon would be. Finally the sun set, and he started off again on his hike south to Göttingen.